


Hot Ice

by farevenasdecidedtouse



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Food Porn, Gen, Post-Canon, Worldbuilding: Festivals - Freeform, Worldbuilding: Food, Worldbuilding: The Clocksmith's Guild of Zhao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 17:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12017367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farevenasdecidedtouse/pseuds/farevenasdecidedtouse
Summary: Two journeymen and one apprentice of the Clocksmith's Guild navigate equipment malfunctions, material shortages, and interpersonal friction at the 58th annual celebration of the Wisdom Bridge's construction.





	Hot Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/gifts).



“Miru!” Ivris called, carefully keeping his voice casually level.“Where’s the rest of the ice?”

Miru glanced sharply toward Ivris from where he and Vero had been explaining The Device’s basic operation to a collection of Khalneise merchants who had been drawn to the Faire in search of new wares not already snapped up by earlier waves of their colleagues. “In the damned warehouse, where think’st thou?” he replied, then winced, hurrying away from the still half-listening merchants. “Forgive my language. Canst not mean to tell me it’s all melted?”

“All but.” Ivris cast his gaze down at the outer chamber of the churn, lid now removed to reveal walnut-sized chunks bobbing in a slushy mass of salty water and sawdust. “I just took it off to see if we needed more salt, and then this.”

“Wilt need to get more ice from the warehouse,” Miru said, glancing into the inner chamber. “More cream, too. At the rate it’s been selling we might actually break even.”

“I did tell thee,” Vero said mildly, stepping over to submerge the bowl and spoons the merchants had just availed themselves in a pail of soapy water near the stack of chests they had been using as a workbench. “Perhaps we ought to give smaller portions.”

“It hardly signifies if all of the ice melts in this damned heat,” Miru replied, then glanced up toward an approaching woman dressed like a nursemaid and herding along two children just ahead of two interested-looking mazei. “Ivris, go! The chit for the cream’s in the box with everything else. Take what we’ve earned and see if they’ll sell thee any ice. Throw about thy name, perhaps, they’ll hardly be able to resist Apprentice Polchina.”

“Yes, Michensol Veär,” Ivris said with an overly deferential bow. Ignoring Miru’s glare, he stepped around Vero’s attempt to fit The Device’s lid on tighter toward the cash box. Popping open the small clockwork latch (the product of Vero's apprenticeship examination which she had then fitted onto a birthday gift from Miru) he procured a surprising amount of coin before hurrying out from under the awning and into the late summer heat.

The guild competition section of the Wisdom Bridge Faire and Mechanical Engineering Exhibition was shaded mostly by awnings erected by hopeful michensol out of bedsheets from the guildhall quarters or tarpaulins begged from the sailors passing on smaller boats below the bridge, the larger crafts relegated to the recently-built locks along either side of the river until the Faire ended and the tents and hastily-built stages were cleared away. Nominally that would be on the morrow, but Ivris had heard from previous competitors that the strike generally began immediately following the Emperor’s speech and the competition judgement, as put-upon apprentices and (mostly) disappointed michensol hurriedly cleared their potential masterworks from the sight of prying and unappreciative eyes. On the other hand, Ivris considered, perhaps Miru and Vero would prefer to continue selling the idea of The Device to late-lingering fairgoers who might be interested in purchasing it for the pittance it would afford its inventors after the guild took its cut. The interest was more than he had honestly expected, although no doubt his two superiors would scoff that one so highly-placed as him -

No, that wasn’t fair. Ivris scowled ahead, quickly glancing away as a woman selling sharply-scented Thu-Teteideise cheeses returned a startled look. True, as he had protested to them both on separate occasion following occasional acerbic but not untrue barbs, he had paid his guild dues and passed his theoretical and practical apprenticeship examinations no different than them. Still, Miru Veär was the son of a poor Eastern blacksmith whose family had essentially bankrupted themselves with a hope of future respectability as the base of a Clocksmith’s Guild of Southern Thu-Everesseian. Vero Santanzhelin was a penniless Ashedro student and a woman to boot, one who had won her place as michensol through years of sheer, deliberate effort and force like a glacier carving a valley. If they resented him for the echoes his name carried, flinched every time he mentioned his family, could he truly blame them?

Well, yes. But he oughtn’t. At least as a lowly apprentice.

His path through the milling crowds was meandering but fairly steady. There, the dais where Edrehasivar VIII Zhas would speak on the hope, prosperity and progress represented by the Wisdom Bridge before the judgement of the competition. There, the Museum Tent, country and city folk alike exiting in animated conversation that often featured the word “surprising.” (As impressive as the Clock was, Ivris privately admitted that his favorite remained the Scale Bridge Model, constructed under the watchful eye of his ancestor by so many now-dachensol.) Here, a long stretch of stalls selling food from every humble farm and far mountaintop in the Ethuveraz and beyond - Isvaroëise trout and Ezheise salmon, lemons and god-hands from further south, odd-colored cabbages and marrows and fruits of all kinds, all wilting in the noon heat and a miasmic haze of sweat, frying dough, manure, and dirty river water. One or two stalls were selling ices as well - fruit juice poured over crushed ice granules in the Barizheise style or cream turned in large ice-packed churns by sweating, tired young relatives. Judging by the amount of business the latter two were doing in the sweltering sun, Ivris wondered if Miru and Vero didn’t have a chance after all, between the construction of the Device itself and the sheer potential - and memorability - of its creation.

The eastern riverbank was in sight and Ivris stepped between the last few huge retracting slats of the bridge with relief. The warehouse lay to one side along one of the wooden scaffolds reinforcing the Istandaärtha banks, flanked on one side by the newest boat lock and on the other by one tangrisha-topped pillar. While ordinarily reserved for household ice delivered by barge from the steppe, near half of it had been partitioned off this day for huge numbers of merchants and Guild hopefuls to store their more edible wares at a somewhat reasonable fee. Presenting his chit to the laborer at the door and flashing his guild badge for good measure, Ivris took a deep breath. “I had hoped to procure some ice, as well,” he said.

The laborer regarded him flatly, heavily-gloved thumbs idly tapping the ends of his iron tongs. “All the ice is earmarked,” he replied.

“Even what the Guild set aside for the Faire storage? Surely that’s under their auspices. I have coin - “

“We can’t just be giving out ice to whoever asks,” said the laborer, ears twitching back with irritation. “Otherwise there’d be none left to keep all your wares cool.”

“I don’t need much. Less than a block, if that can possibly be spared,” Ivris replied, his own ears carefully level to avoid evincing exasperation unbecoming one hardly more than a michen. “Please, even if you have some smaller chips left over from cutting - “

“Wait here,” the laborer said, slouching through an adjoining door that seemed to lead into some sort of office.

Rolling his eyes, Ivris proceeded to revel a few more minutes in the blessed cold. He made forward to sit down on top of several stacked boxes of apples when the door swung open and the laborer reemerged, trailing behind an old but heavily-muscled elf who looked like a foreman of some description. “We are told you require ice,” he told Ivris.

“And a pail of cream besides,” Ivris said, producing chit and guild badge once more. The foreman’s ears flicked at the name on the second but to Ivris’s relief he made no comment. “If it would be an inconvenience we do have coin,” he added, holding out roughly half of what he had been given.

“Done,” the foreman said with a rapidity that made Ivris wonder whether he had greatly overestimated the cost of ice even so close to midsummer or whether the laborers had simply been instructed to defer to the guildsmen’s whims. Ordering the laborer to procure a burlap sack and a saw, the foreman turned to Ivris with an interested look from under his thick silver eyebrows. “You were the one with that clockwork confection device, were you not?” he asked.

“Well. It’s the invention of the michensol mentoring us. We had little enough to do with the device itself, save some of the construction that might be trusted to an apprentice,” Ivris replied.

“It seems a very complicated solution for a very trivial lack of something to us,” said the foreman, “but then we thought much the same of the Wisdom Bridge fifty years ago. We suppose that’s why we’re not a craftsman like yourself.” The laborer returned, handing Ivris a delivery-sized ice block and the second large cream pail which Ivris received with a nod. “An you win the competition we hope to be remembered as having aided,” the foreman told him with a wink as Ivris lugged both out of the door.

The heat, pleasant for a few blessed moments after the chill of the warehouse, grew quickly twice as unbearable as it had been previously with the added weight of both cream and ice, the latter of which seemed to be melting down his back where he had slung the bag at a rate faster than he had imagined possible. Progress through the crowd seemed slower, occasionally stymied by unruly tent material or long lines (and on one occasion two shrieking children charging after a swarm of illusory golden butterflies that nearly made him drop the cream on his own foot) along the bridge whose iron felt warm even through the thick soles of his boots. His feet were burning by the time he caught sight of Miru gesturing frantically over the heads of the crowd, an expression of terror on his face. “Didst get it? Start breaking it!” he ordered.

“What’s - “ Ivris began, then started back a pace.Over Miru’s shoulder, Vero’s intense green gaze was fixed on the stately progress of a true-white lace parasol through the crowd. Looking down to the crabbed but steady hand that held it, then to the face they had all seen at a distance at every Faire they had attended, then to the three sumptuously-dressed young women attending the parasol bearer, Ivris knew her immediately. “The Archduchess?” he squeaked, voice cracking like it hadn’t in years.

“Yes! Stop gawping, she’s coming this way!” Miru hissed.

Ivris rushed over to the crates they had been using for a workspace, procuring a chisel from Vero’s neatly-organized toolbox and beginning to chip off palm-sized pieces from the block. The water he drained onto the the bridge floor to almost immediately begin drying was still somewhat cool, at least. As Vero stepped forward to meet the Imperial party, Miru mouthed “stall them” over his shoulder. With a nod to him and a deep bow to the Archduchess, quickly flanked by Miru, Vero began with the most formal greeting she could clearly think of.

Ivris, meanwhile, forced the last of the ice into the outer hull, spread it over with a fresh layer of salt and sawdust, and then despaired. Already he could see the larger chunks of ice melting where they touched the outer walls of the hull. It was no use - at this rate the batch currently churning would still be slush no matter how long Vero stalled.

Over the noise of shattering ice, her voice carried through the heavy air: “...simple clockwork crankshaft… mo more than five manual rotations in an hour… one month of drafting and three months of construction… entry sponsored by the Faire lottery…”

Was it -

Ivris dropped abruptly to his knees, leaning forward to inspect the unadorned brass chassis stamped with the Zhaö Guild maker’s mark just above the join of the front spigot and the side plates. “Miru? See’st this?” he asked before being nearly knocked onto his side by Miru’s sudden appearance at his other. He made a minute adjustment, and a noise that none of them had noticed over the river, the musicians, and the dull roar of the the crowd - a fine, grinding distortion of the usual mechanical noise - abruptly ceased, leaving only the calm, steady ticks of the clockwork in its wake.

Ivris half-consciously backed away, but Miru, as if in uncharacteristic anticipation of what he was about to say, held up one hand before burying his face in both. “It was me. I set it up while Vero was putting up the awning and assembling everything else,” he said. “I’m the biggest fool at this fair. To set it up with the damned casing crooked… we’ll be lucky if the smaller gears aren’t warped from the friction.”

“Sometimes it takes one less skilled to see the simpler solutions,” Ivris replied weakly. Miru’s ears flicked back and he opened his mouth to presumably take exception to the platitude only to close it with an audible click of teeth as they both noticed the white parasol moving gracefully toward them, its lawn-clad owner flanked by the still-explaining Vero.

“We would gladly taste some, if there is any to be had,” the Archduchess finally said, leaning close to peer at The Device through her lorgnette with genuine interest.

Miru kicked Ivris in the ankle as he reached for the pail of water. “Not that one! Get the clean one, in the chest!” he urged.

Ivris scrambled for the chest in question, nearly dropping the bowl and spoon twice with ice-wet hands before hanging it to Vero who opened the spigot of the center chamber to allow a small portion of brown-speckled white to flow into the bowl. Both he and Miru let out relieved, silent breaths - the product was softer than it ought to have been, oozing from The Device with a consistency closer to soured cream than the clotted-cream texture they strove for, but it held its shape as Vero twirled it carefully into a spiral before handing it to the Archduchess.

A moment, and Ino Drazhin, acknowledged intellectual and spiritual heir of ancestress Vedero Drazhin, who had never missed a Faire since their inception and who some of the michensol were convinced advised the Masters in their competition decisions, was delicately scraping the bottom of the bowl with her spoon with every indication of thorough enjoyment. “While a mere enthusiastic amateur in matters of clockwork devices,” she said, beautiful courtly diction rounding every word into a gem, “we feel that your superiors would be foolish to overlook this for the competition prize. Or indeed for masterwork status.”

“As you say,” Ivris said with a clearly surprised flick of his ears.

“Please, do not humor us.” The Archduchess’s eyes twinkled further back into a cobwebby map of wrinkles clearly gleaned from a lifetime of every possible expression. “Do you doubt your entry’s worthiness, or its efficacy?”

“Well,” Miru said, blustering forward past Ivris, “an the first certificate of masterwork in nine years were to be awarded to a machine for confection rather than some great social or infrastructural improvement, we would be very surprised. All of us.”

Her clear grey gaze turned on each of them. Ivris forced himself to face her, ears up. “We doubt we are the first to observe that some of the most fortuitous inventions of your order have seemed inconsequential or unnecessary at the time of their proposal,” she said.

“Yes, I believe we are currently standing on one,” Vero replied.

The Archduchess laughed. “Truly the sentiment of the day. In any case, we wish you the best.”

“He’s right, thou know’st,” Vero told Miru as the Imperial procession made its stately way toward the ostensibly improved boiler apparatus engineered by Michensols Ainezh and Brachinar. “It wasn’t a matter of foolishness, it was a matter of distraction and being so accustomed to workshop conditions that we neglected to question the root of the problem.”

“I still ought to have known,” Miru muttered.

“I ought as well. So ought the Polchina in our midst,” Vero replied with an ironic smile. “Gods’ love, Miru, it was a temporary and now-remedied setback. Pull thine ears up and mix another batch, this one’s nearly gone.”

Miru pulled out the fresh churn basin and turned to begin mixing the cream, sugar, and small, precious paper of Soluneise cinnamon that would lend the majority of flavor. Vero, meanwhile, turned back to Ivris. “Don’t think this means thou’st somehow proven thyself to us,” she told him, “because thou’st never truly needed to.”

Ivris, prepared to internally bridle at her first statement, jerked his chin up at the second. “Beg pardon?”

“We don’t resent thee nearly as much as thou seem’st to think,” Vero said. “Well, Miru, perhaps - “

“I don’t resent thee either!” Miru cried, making as though to throw a sticky, cream-spattered rag at Vero. She shot him a cheeky grin that briefly rendered her staid face beautiful. “Well. I may have a bit at first, but that was simply on principle. Hast ever been as hardworking and willing to learn as any other apprentice.”

“Art kind, but art wrong.” The admission sounded strange from Ivris’s own lips despite how many times he had thought on it. “That I’m good at playacting one as humble as thou say’st - “

“...makes thee no different than the village blacksmith’s son and the factory workers’ daughter playacting at being michensol,” Vero replied, holding up a hand to the crowd newly milling around The Device in the wake of the Archduchess’s passage. "We all play our roles, it's the effort and sincerity we put into them that makes them work." The mask restored once again, she stepped toward a pair of interested goblin men wearing the colors of some Barizheise merchant guild. Her words still hung in the air like the heat off of Ainezh and Brachinar’s boiler, weaving the festival scene around them into something more unexpected than Ivris had dreamed it might be.

From the eastern bank the stately chime of the guildhall clock sounded five and Miru glanced toward Ivris. “Gods, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything but porridge and iced cream since this morning. Might’st go buy us somewhat to eat?”

Ivris fished the remaining coins from his pocket, glancing contemplatively down the stretch of the bridge. “Well, we’ve plenty for food. I did see some of those delightful mushroom pies from last year on my way to the icehouse.”

“That does sound delightful. Vero?” At a nod from Vero, Ivris set off. From the now-empty churn, Ivris stole a fingerful as he strode back toward the scents of gravy and rosemary. The iced cream was dreamily sweet, the shimmer of cinnamon that lingered past swallowing like the potential of competition victory and even dachensol status for his two friends that seemed, at this moment, none too far off.

**Author's Note:**

> Serenade, I couldn't decide which of your requested tags to go with, so I just decided to write something that involved all of them. Happy Coronation Ceremony and many happy returns.


End file.
